Focus sessions and the Pomodoro timer

Starting a session

Open Latr and choose the Focus tab. It is the whole timer, in the popup: a dial with the time left, the cycle as a bar with the part you are in marked, the round, and every button you need - Pause timer, +5 min, Skip to break and End session. Start one with a line about what you are working on, or press Start a focus session on this page to make the page in front of you the session's subject. Under the timer are the sites a session blocks (switch it on, choose Block these or Allow only these, add the site you are on in one press), the switches that decide how strict a session is, and your focus bundles, each with its own Start. The Focus page is the same timer with room to set bundles up; the full rules are in Settings → Focus and site blocking.

It keeps running with the popup closed, and the toolbar badge counts down the minutes. It survives a laptop going to sleep, the browser being restarted and a sync from another machine, because a session is stored as the time it ends rather than as a countdown somebody has to keep ticking. Pause stores what was left instead of stopping a clock, for the same reason.

Focusing on something

A session can be about something. Type what you are working on before you start - it is optional, and starting is still one click - or choose Open and start focus session from a reminder, a kept page or a saved window. Latr opens that page first, at the place you were reading, and then starts the timer.

A focus bundle is the pages one piece of work needs, saved on the Focus page. Starting a bundle opens its pages and lets exactly those through while the session runs, whatever your block list says. Make one by pasting addresses, or from your open tabs, a saved window or a tab group.

When focus time ends, Latr asks what to do about the task: Mark it done, 5 more minutes or Leave it for now. It never asks whether you succeeded.

The cycle, and the lengths

The defaults are the received technique: 25 minutes of focus, 5 minutes of break, four rounds, and a 15-minute break at the end of the cycle. Settings draws the whole cycle as a bar, so you can see how long one takes before you change anything. All four numbers are yours, and so is whether the next part starts on its own or waits for you.

They start at 25/5/15 because that is the version most people arrive already knowing. A timer whose first screen asks you to design a technique is a timer nobody starts.

What happens to your reminders

Anything that comes due during focus time is held, exactly the way quiet hours holds one - the reminder's own time is never overwritten, and the queue shows a chip saying why a notification you expected has not arrived.

Anything that comes due during a break is delivered. That is the point of the distinction rather than a detail: a break is the moment you wanted to be told things, and a timer that holds your notifications through it is holding them through the one part of the hour you were free.

Blocking distracting sites

Settings → Focus and site blocking → Block sites during focus. Then choose what the list does:

• Block these - the sites on the list are blocked, everything else opens as usual.
• Allow only these - only the sites on the list open, everything else is blocked. Naming the three sites you need is a list that ends; naming the fifty that distract you is one nobody finishes. An empty list blocks nothing, so switching this on never shuts the internet by surprise.

Add a site by typing it, or choose Block this site during focus from the popup menu while you are on it. Subdomains are covered by the parent, so reddit.com is enough. Under Allow only these, Allow search result pages keeps search results pages open; a link you click from one is still checked against the list.

During focus time a blocked site opens a page telling you how long is left and what you are working on, with Go back, Save for later and End session. Nothing is blocked during a break. The page deliberately does not let one site through as an exception, because the record of what you did would then be claiming focus time that was not.

While a session runs

Three optional extras, all off until you turn them on:

• Save and close other tabs - the rest of the window is saved as a window and closed when the session starts, and reopened when it ends (never at a break). The tab you are working on stays, and so do a bundle's pages. If the browser closes mid-session, the pile comes back the next time it starts.
• Make ending early take two clicks - End session asks twice, you cannot pause focus time or skip it to a break, and the site list is locked until the session ends. You can always end a session; this only stops it happening by reflex. Latr will never make a session impossible to end.
• Pause reminders in full screen - reminders wait while the browser is full screen, like when presenting or sharing your screen, for up to 30 minutes.

What it records, and what it does not

Latr keeps a 60-day log of your focus time and draws it on the home page as minutes and sessions, with a bar for each of the last seven days; the Focus page shows today's. Minutes from a session you cut short still count - the work happened whether or not the timer agreed it was finished.

There is no streak, no score, no average and no comparison with last week, and there never will be. Those are the shapes that turn a record into a verdict, and nothing here gets worse for missing a day. It is on your machine like everything else and it is in your backup.

Focus, quiet hours and snooze

• Quiet hours are a recurring window you set once - overnight, usually.
• Pause reminders (Settings → Focus and site blocking) is the same hold, started by hand for an hour, two, four or until tomorrow, with no timer and no blocking.
• A focus session is that hold going round a cycle, with the breaks delivering.
• Snooze moves one reminder. The other three hold all of them.

All of them are held rather than rescheduled, and all of them show the reason on the row.